First Post - yay!

Hi everyone. This is my first personal blogpost. I suppose it will consist of the following: 1. Who I am 2. Why this blog

Who I am? (Or, as Valjean put it so beautifully in Les Mis, "Who am I?".) I am a recent college grad in her twenties, migrating between New York and Jerusalem. I am a religious Jew, trying to live a life of meaning and modernity, finding that in an era of postmodernity, the two can be at odds with each other: It is hard to have meaningful experiences and connections with people when one is expected to constantly ironic and critical, to wear jeans and then comment on how those jeans are the products of a capitalistic patriarchy.

I like poetry, Frida Kahlo, and soccer. The last item might be due to my Brazilian heritage - thanks Mom! I speak a bit of Porgtuguese (no, they don't speak Spanish in Sao Paulo) - at least enough to get me and my mother through a night at the airport hospital when she was sick with foodpoisoning and I had to do the talking for us. I also know a bit of Spanish and French, but would like to improve on all of my language skills a) so I can have meaningful conversations with those who speak those languages b) to read foreign literature in the original - which I can kind of do in French. Portuguese and Spanish my reading seems to be limited to newspapers and magazines.

I am addicted to coffee. My favorite foods are (in no particular order): papaya, pao de quiejo, bourekas, falafel, pizza, bananas. I also like chocolate.

So now that you know enough about me that you can feed me dinner, let's move on to part 2: Why am I starting this blog?

Traditionally, I have written many Facebook notes for my friends and my "friends", which have pondered my life, as well as general observations and even thoughts about religion. When I arrived in Israel however, I faced a major problem: I became addicted to Facebook. This made sense: I was in a place where I knew barely anyone, two of the people I did know were out of the country, and I had many on-line "errands" - applications, apartment hunting, etc., for which Facebook proved the perfect tool of procrastination.

It occured to me at a certain point that this obsession was unhealthy: There is nothing wrong with wanting to write one's thoughts, but the need to constantly share makes one constantly aware of other's perceptions. Sartre's definition of hell, in his play "No Exit" is looking at oneself through other's eyes. I found I was doing the same - looking at myself through the reflection of how it would appear to others if they read my Facebook profile.

I also realize that a supposed "friendship" I was developing with someone who lived nearby was in fact no more than a string of Facebook messages - which is not a real friendship. I realized that I was replacing real connections with people with these casual but frequent virtual contacts, which are fine to supplement connections (depending on how much time one wishes to spend on the internet) but can't create them.

I realized if Facebook dissapeared tomorrow, I'd manage: I could stay in email/gchat/phone/skype contact with most of my friends. But I would need Facebook for two things: 1. Group events that I get invited to/creating events is an easy way of inviting people 2.I enjoyed writing about my life for an audience, instead of in a journal. So this blog was born - a way to post my thoughts online, while still distancing myself from Facebook's addictive glow.

What is the difference between blogging and Facebook? Simple: Here I write for a general audience - the same way that even my journal, is, in some ways, intended for an abstract "reader". But there, I know who is reading, and know it is popping up on their mini-feed. That being said, friends reading this who wish to post comments should feel free to do so, and not feel the need to remain "anonymous" so that I maintain the abstract reader in my head. Somehow with blogging, it is easier for me to write to an abstract reader even when I know who some of my real readers are - one of my weird psychological quirks, I suppose.